Aaron Swartz: Is it time for an Internet Bill of Rights? + The Best Way to Honor Aaron Swartz

In the US, the Bill of Rights maps out the fundamental privileges each citizen has in the country, but is it time to draft an Internet Bill of Rights? Congress has attempted to implement legislation that could stop online freedoms, but a group of online advocates are pushing lawmakers to sign the Internet Bill of Rights to allow the freedom of expression, access, openness, innovation and privacy. Aaron Swartz, founder and executive director for Demand Progress, joins us with his take.

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Aaron Swartz Death: The Best Way to Honor the Reddit Co-Founder is to Keep the Internet Free

As I was browsing the internet, I came across an article announcing Aaron Swartz’s passing. The mainstream news labels him as merely the co-founder of Reddit. What they forget is that he was a fiery young man spearheading the internet freedom movement.

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Without the internet Aaron tried to protect, political activism would be severely crippled. Without a free and open internet, you wouldn’t be reading this. Without a free internet, the organization that I founded in January wouldn’t exist. If not for Aaron and Demand Progress, SOPA, PIPA and CISPA would have probably killed both it and the internet. I have never personally met him, but that does not diminish the gratitude I have for his work. In maintaining the freedom of the World Wide Web, he helped to preserve, for now, what is possibly the greatest tool for preserving our great Republic.

On Friday, Aaron Swartz’s body was found in his Brooklyn home where he committed suicide. Swartz, who was a co-developer of RSS and helped establish the online site Reddit, took his life after facing legal issues for his alleged involvement in a hacking case involving the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Swartz was being accused of taking documents from protected computers and was later indicted for stealing information from the MIT and it is believed that the Internet prodigy’s legal troubles and history of depression lead him to take his own life. Marina Portnaya joins us to take a look back on Swartz’s life.

DemocracyNow.org – Today we remember the pioneering computer programmer and cyberactivist Aaron Swartz, who took his own life Friday at the age of 26. As a teenager, Swartz helped develop RSS, revolutionizing how people use the internet, going on to co-own Reddit, now one of the world’s most popular sites. He was also a key architect of Creative Commons and an organizer of the grassroots movement to defeat the controversial House internet censorship bill, The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), and the Senate bill, The PROTECT IP Act (PIPA).

Swartz hanged himself just weeks before the start of a controversial trial. He was facing up to 35 years in prison sneaking into the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and downloading millions of articles provided by the subscription-based academic research service JSTOR. We hear Swartz in his own words and speak to Harvard Law School Professor Lawrence Lessig, a longtime mentor and friend. “There are a thousand things we could have done, and we have to do because Aaron Swartz is now an icon, an ideal,” Lessig says. “He’s what we will be fighting for, all of us, for the rest of our lives.” Lessig also echoes the claims of Swartz’s parents that decisions made by prosecutors and MIT contributed to his death, saying: “This was somebody who was pushed to the edge by what I think of as kind of a bullying by our government.”

DemocracyNow.org – Cyberactivist and computer programmer Aaron Swartz took his life on Friday at the age of 26. We air an address of Swartz’s from last May where he speaks about the battle to defeat The Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA — a campaign he helped lead. “[SOPA] will have yet another name, and maybe a different excuse, and probably do its damage in a different way, but make no mistake, the enemies of the freedom to connect have not disappeared,” Swartz said. “… Next time, they might just win. Let’s not let that happen.”

Computer programmer and internet freedom activist Aaron Swartz takes his own life. But what was really at stake in his work to ensure internet freedoms and free access to public information? Guests: Lawrence Lessig, Tim Lee, Maria Bustillos.

The Golden Rule

“That which is hateful to you do not do to another ... the rest (of the Torah) is all commentary, now go study.” - Rabbi Hillel

Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

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